'Twas the Night Before Christmas - and Literary Allusions

I love Clement C. Moore's 'Twas the Night Before Christmas -- own many versions. My favorites includes the Tomie dePaola illustrated version of this title. The borders of each page are patterns from antique quilts. Another is the Anita Lobel version, a Victorian tale set in a brownstone. And no one should miss James Marshall's illustrated version (with stars on Santa's cowboy boots - a little bit of Marshall's home state of Texas).

And while it is not a version of "Twas the night Before Christmas Doreen Cronin's Click, Clack, Ho! Ho! Ho! has so many literary allusions to Moore's poem. Cronin's text brings Moore's stanza's to mind, and Betsy Lewin's illustrations bring even more to the allusions to the poem. A group of kindergarteners who have heard Moore's poem often enough that they can recite the first several stanzas by heart...so when they heard / saw some references to the poem in Cronin's book they began to recite the poem. "Not a creature was stirring not even a mouse," "Stockings were hung by the chimney with care," "opened the shutters and threw up the sash," "And what should they see but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer," ... what fun to introduce the concept of literary play.


Readers who might be interested in reading more about Clement C. Moore and his poem may want to investigate the information on Sarah Uthoff's Trundlebed Tales blog https://trundlebedtales.wordpress.com/2013/12/24/night-before-christmas-aka-a-visit-from-saint-nicholas.
The link to the historic version of The Night Before Christmas may not be a working link (sorry).